Jim Slotek, QMI Agency

Being friends with Adam Sandler is double-edged. On the plus side, he casts his friends in his movies. But if you’re Kevin Nealon, it’s seldom flatteringly.

“It’s always a humiliating role for me,” says Nealon, who is in the Sandler/Drew Barrymore romantic comedy Blended, out this Friday.

“I’m usually some schlub. I had t—s on my head in (the demon comedy) Little Nicky, I had horrible plastic surgery in Just Go With It. I was the Neighborhood Watch guy in (You Don’t Mess with the) Zohan, who kept crapping his pants because he was scared.

“I’ve got to get to the bottom of this,” Nealon says good-naturedly. In fact, two decades after working on Saturday Night Live together, Sandler and Nealon remain close. “Our kids go to the same school now.”

In Blended, Sandler is a widowed father of three daughters, with Barrymore a divorced mom of two sons. After meeting cute-but-disastrously on a blind date, they end up accidentally booked at the same “mixed family” resort in Sun City, South Africa, where chemistry comes in mixed-drink form with an umbrella.

Working without prosthetics for a change, Nealon plays a loud, annoying guy from Vancouver with a trophy wife and a moody teenage son who falls for one of Sandler’s daughters.

“I’m not sure where Vancouver came from,” Nealon says. “They might have just picked a city randomly. But I have a soft spot for Vancouver. I filmed Roxanne there with Steve Martin, and I filmed Happy Gilmore there.” Yup, another Sandler film.

In fact, the standup comic – who’s playing Niagara’s Fallsview Casino this coming weekend – has done well by his entire circle of friends. He believes his era of SNL was shaped for its chemistry and familiarity.

“I think at that particular point in the evolution of SNL, Lorne (Michaels) was looking for chemistry in a cast instead of bringing up a bunch of strangers. I knew Dana (Carvey), and Dennis (Miller) a little bit (Nealon and Carvey were jogging partners). And Jan Hooks I used to date. So we had chemistry together. And I have to think they were also looking (at physicality) – a tall guy, y’know, I superficially looked like Chevy Chase. I think body type might have been a part of it, believe it or not.”

He may be right. Although Carvey recommended Nealon (along with comedian/impressionist Kevin Pollak), Nealon was not a character comic and didn’t do impressions. Pressed to name a real-life character he played on the show, he can only come up with sportscaster Brent Musburger.

But he had a knack for writing, and gravitated towards the Weekend Update news desk.

Post-SNL, the news remained part of his standup for a while. “I would do Weekend Update in my act, but I stopped. I still read a lot of newspapers, but not for stage material.

“As a comic you’re kind of like a blues musician. The more experiences you have, the more you draw on them. I started writing closer to home, reflections and exaggerations on my life.”

Fun fact about the road not taken: Nealon is a former kicker/QB from his days at Connecticut’s Fairfield University. At the open-mike stage of his standup career, he’d arranged a try-out with the USFL’s L.A. Express.

“I went out and bought six USFL footballs, which were lighter than an NFL football, went to Fairfax High in Hollywood and used their football field for a few months.

“I thought it might be a hook to be a football player/comedian. But my comedy career took off before tryouts.”